Max Verstappen admitted he had the wrong tyre strategy and lacked pace as he hung on to claim third place for Red Bull in Sunday’s United States Grand Prix.
The four-time world champion, who started from second on the grid, opened the race with two stints on soft tyres that left him with a lot of work to do as he was stuck with a two-stop strategy.
Runaway world championship leader Kimi Antonelli won convincingly for Mercedes ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and now needs only two points in Mexico next weekend to become F1’s youngest champion.
Verstappen had hoped to compete with the 20-year-old Italian but was ultimately unable to match his overall speed and performance.
"I think our overall pace was not good enough and probably the tyres that we had available were not the right ones," he said.
"It's something that we have to understand because I think in the last few races it was always working well for us.
"For whatever reason it didn't work out here. And this choice of tyres also meant everyone knew we had to be on a two-stop race. We still managed to get on the podium, maybe a little bit luckily with the VSC (Virtual Safety Car) at the end, but I'll take it.”
After two consecutive wins at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia and the Singapore Grand Prix it was a disappointment for Verstappen but it extended his strong run of results in the second half of the season.
It also meant the end of his slim hopes of fifth world championship title.